


The Spider and the Wolf

by PennySparker



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Awkward Romance, F/M, Friends to Lovers, High School, OC's name explained in my bio, Peter Parker/OC - Freeform, School Buddies - Freeform, Superheroes, SwiftSpider, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25953037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PennySparker/pseuds/PennySparker
Summary: A Peter Parker/OC fanfic, originally posted on Fanfiction.netFull summary inside!
Relationships: Peter Parker/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 2





	1. Prologue

**Outline:**

Sarah 'Swift' Hood has never been an overly friendly person, and she never will. At least that's what she thinks. No friends, no parents, just a kind landlady and friend, Eliza, who lets her rent a room in Queens and pays for her education at Midtown High. And that's all there is to her life.

Or is it?

By day, she goes to school, then goes out to where she works at a mechanic's shop to get her rent money. By night the amethyst necklace she never lets go of unfolds into a highly advanced tech suit, and she becomes the secretive crime-fighter known to the public as... Wolf Girl. Not the best alias, but no one tells J. Jonah Jameson to change his mind.

The suit is specifically calibrated and tailored to her powers, which she gained in the explosion that killed her parents, and which allow her to transform into any kind of animal at will or even use their abilities or features, as an example she can have wings, claws, and/or a tail only or a cat's night vision or wolf's howl, as well as being able to understand and speak to them.

She has never trusted anyone else with her identity, afraid of betrayal or more accurately, the pain it causes.

So what happens when the boy she loves discovers her secret?

* * *

  
She yawns, opening her eyes groggily, and sees her mother smiling fondly down at her, with her father just beyond. This is her last happy memory, and she tries to memorise every single detail of it.  
The leather seat, soft and warm beneath her tired head.   
Her mother’s beautiful red hair and loving face.   
The way the light struck, then passed her father’s glasses as he, too, looked at her, love and devotion evident in his every feature.   
The yellow-green flames as the chemical factory just off the road exploded, throwing their car away and into a ditch. 

The end of her happiness as she crawled out of her seat and frantically tried to wake her parents, but to no avail. Neither of them returned home. 


	2. Chapter 1

Sarah ‘Swift’ Hood walked into school, brown hair tucked as neatly under a grey hoodie as her landlady, Eliza, demanded it. She wove quickly through the bustling throng of students to her locker, which she unlocked, then locked as fast as she could; a safeguard against the bullies and mockers she was a magnet for. Slipping into her seat in English, she sighed and propped her face up on her hand. Her classmates slowly filed in, chatting and taking amongst themselves. None of it was directed towards her, of course — she had been deemed unfriendly years ago, and those who had tried to involve her in a good-natured chat had had their heads practically snapped off. Her neighbours took their seats, a boy named Peter behind her with his best friend Ned. Neither of them were any different from the others in terms of having tried to talk to her, but she often saw (or more like felt) Peter shooting glances at her when he thought she couldn’t tell. She hoped he wouldn’t come up to her today; so far she was having a boring day, and anyone trying to start a conversation with her would only get brushed off or ignored, and he seemed like a nice-enough guy, not entirely deserving of her cold shoulder.  _ I’ve never had friends, and I never will. No matter how hard they try. _ She glared hard at her eraser, as if it was to blame for this whole thing. 

Her parents had died in a car crash when she was five and left her orphaned and alone, not many people she knew left in the world. 

A distant aunt had taken her in until two years ago, when she was twelve, then she had learned to fend for herself, getting a job at a mechanic’s shop to earn her food and rent at Eliza’s. The landlady was more like a friend or mother figure, really, making sure she was cleaned up and on time for school everyday and giving her helpful bits of advice just when she needed it. She was virtually the only person Sarah — or by her preferred nickname, Swift — would talk to, and the best she‘d ever known since her parent’s death. 

Absorbed in her thoughts, she completely ignored all the teachers and school staff — they merely sighed and moved on to another student because by this point, they’d all learned that it was no use getting her to answer anything unless Eliza instructed it, though astoundingly she never got kicked out. 

School was out, parents picking up and summoning students back home. Swift walked by herself as had been her custom every single day. Lately she had been thinking about her parents more often and starting to miss them especially today, that lonely, gnawing feeling even stronger than usual. 

So on the way back, she climbed the stairs to the roof of a nearby carpark (or car park), walked to the edge and let herself drop. 


	3. Chapter 2

The sensation of falling wasn’t unpleasant; it was something she had felt many times before and grown quite comfortable with. 

It was hitting the pavement she was concerned about. 

At the very last moment she could spare, pure white wings unfolded from her back and bore her up into the sky with the real fluidity and motion only birds had been able to truly master. 

The explosion that had killed her parents and ended her carefree days of childhood had also gifted her with powers beyond anything she’d ever known; now she could truly control nature, being able to transform into animals and use any features they had. 

In perfect synchrony with the wings, her hand reached up and touched the purple amethyst necklace which in a split second unfolded into a high-tech, full body suit of purple iron and gold alloy. It had been given to her — or more like slipped into her pocket — by Tony Stark when he had visited their school a few years ago, on one of those PR things that was obviously organised by some employee of his and not a thing he decided to do himself. She’d found it useful; a while before she’d come across a bunch of guys mugging a girl and jumped in headfirst, her greater agility and sheer willpower giving her what she needed to fend them off and see the girl safely away from the gang. From then on, she’d made a career out of stopping crime and protecting the innocent in the nighttime danger of New York. The suit was vital to her endeavours — if anyone less scrupulous than herself found out they might go after Eliza, like criminals and felons sometimes went after police officers’ families. And even Eliza herself couldn’t know. She would worry about Swift being out there, fighting people by choice (not even in self-defense!), and surely try to stop her in some way. 

One time the teenager had wondered about how Stark had known her secret identity, but then came full circle multiple times and chalked it up to one of the many resources he had at his disposal. 

So she had just shrugged everything else off and gone out there, night after night, to help the helpless in a battle against evil. She even ignored the dangers; with her powers, she wouldn’t get hurt, and in the event that she did, no one would notice, only maybe Eliza, and even then she was reasonably sure she’d be able to hide it. 

She loved what she did, and no one would distract her from it. 

It was a new day, and Swift was feeling pretty good about it. 

The sunny-side eggs Eliza had fried up for breakfast had been soft with a runny yolk, just the way she liked them. 

Her landlady hadn’t even asked a casual question about the new, sudden bruise on her arm. It was admittedly unusual, but she didn’t give it much further thought; if another thing like that happened, she might be worried that Eliza was getting slacker with her brief before-school cleanness inspections. 

Their history teacher hadn’t been as dull as he always was, and she started to think that maybe everyone in New York was conspiring to give her a better day. 

As she sat down for lunch, she spotted Peter across the cafeteria with Ned. He was waving at someone with a smile, and it took her a moment to realise he was looking at  _ her _ . She quickly looked over her shoulder, but there was nobody there except one of the cafeteria workers, and no one waved to them.  _ Well, if you wanted to know what an unusual day was, this is definitely a prime example.  _ She hesitated a while, then started to pick up her tray and — 

Hold on, what was she  _ doing _ ? She didn’t  have friends, that was her rule. And now she just gets up and heads over at a mere friendly wave? _Uh,_ _ no .  _

Footsteps sounded behind her, and she automatically prepared to snap at Flash or some other bully, but when she turned around, there stood Ned and Peter. Frozen, she simply blinked up at them until one of them spoke.

“Hi. We were just, y’know, wondering if you wanted to, um, sit with us?” This from Peter, that wide, smiley smile still stuck on his face like a gecko to the ceiling. She watched him carefully. His behaviour was one of nervousness, and her immediate thought was one of the others had set this up as a prank. But then she focused more closely. If that was the case, he would probably pretend to be overly nervous, but he was swallowing and trying  _ not _ to show that he was nervous, which indicated that this wasn’t a prank and he was genuinely asking her if she wanted to come over.

_ Just say yes or no. _ The whole rush of thoughts had taken less than a minute.  _ You fight crime through the night, defending the innocent and going around with nothing but your wits and powers to defend you and do it without flinching. And then when someone at school actually asks you to come over to their table you freeze. Impressive, outlaw. Real impressive. _ She’d come to call herself ‘outlaw’ in her thoughts, since that’s what she technically was. 

Glancing back at Peter, he had started to look worried. He ducked his head to whisper something to Ned, and his friend muttered back.

“Okay.”

He jerked his head up; her acceptance had clearly taken him by surprise, and it was probably the first time he’d ever heard her speak. Ned had disappeared, so Peter was now left to deal with her on his own. “Okay,” he repeated, as if he thought she’d change her mind. She nodded. _Turn around. Run. What are you doing_ , her brain screamed at her and she tried to silence it. _ Look, I don’t know what I’m doing, okay? I just... I feel like I can go with him for some reason.  _

_ And I don’t even know what that reason is.  _

_ Am I messed up, or what? _

Much of what she had learned about socialising, she had gleaned from watching the other students with their friends, enemies and frenemies, though she stayed well away from them while observing their habits. So from prior experience she knew that Peter was, in a sense, going out on a limb to try and make friends, what with her being the school freak and all. But it wasn’t like he was so popular, either — she didn’t really see anyone with him besides Ned, and there were certainly no girls lining up to date him, as in the case of Brad Davis.

_ So... yeah. _ With that, she stood up to follow him to where she saw him and Ned eat at lunch every day. As they did, he turned to her. “So, we haven’t really met before. I’m Peter,” he said, holding out a hand for her to shake. “Sarah, right?” “Just call me Swift,” she replied. “‘Sarah’ makes me sound like a foreign princess.” He smiled at that, and she found herself grinning back. Maybe she could try this ‘friend’ thing, just for a while. 

And if it didn’t work out, she would just go back to closing herself off. 


	4. Chapter 3

Wind rushing into her face.

Her long brown hair, whipping in the wake she left behind. 

That heart-stopping feeling of ‘what’s up danger’ as she went diving, dipping, whirling through the air to dodge the skyscrapers that blocked out the stars. _ Hello, New York. Whatcha got for me today?  _

It had been a few weeks since she’d made friends with Peter, and a few days since some weird baby hero had shown up on the news. J. Jonah Jameson had christened him Spider-Man, and, well, no one dared to challenge that, however cheesy they might think the name. She herself had been called Wolf Girl, and she was starting to think Spider-Man was lucky. 

As she soared past the Empire State Building, she checked her watch. There didn’t seem to be any crime tonight, but she would check again later; it was twenty minutes before Eliza demanded her home, and she could always sneak out when she was supposed to be asleep. 

Now she headed back to Queens and took a detour to pass Peter’s house and peek in the window. He was sitting at the kitchen table having dinner with his aunt; Aunt May, she remembered Peter calling her. He looked more tired than usual, and she made a mental note to check on him tomorrow.

Landing on a short rooftop, she lightly pressed on the suit and it folded in to become her necklace once more. Then she quickly jumped down and slipped into the next building through the front door, where Eliza was waiting for her on the couch.  
“Where have you been?” She looked up from her book. Swift was aware she was breathing hard like she’d just run a marathon. “Just went out to get some hot dogs.” She held up the bag as proof.

“You know I cook pasta on Thursdays.” Eliza gave her one of her mom frowns. “What’s been going on with you, lately? You’re so... distracted, it’s like your mind is always elsewhere. You even forgot movie night.” 

The teenager stared hard down at her feet. “Just busy with school, Eliza.” “Come on, don’t give me that. You’ve never been that interested in school.” 

Swift swallowed, but Eliza spoke up before she could reply. “I’m glad you’re finally making friends at school. You know that, and I’m proud of you. But you need to stop dodging me. You go to school with Peter and Ned, then disappear for hours on end, only returning a second before I get worried.” She started to reach out to take Swift’s hands in hers but stopped. “I just want to know what’s going on with you.” Swift tried to give her a reassuring smile. “I’m fine, Eliza. Really.” Her landlady nodded. “Go on and get some sleep. Last school day before the weekend tomorrow.” She headed up to her room to clean up before she went out later. 

Lying to Eliza wasn’t something she liked doing, but it had to be done if she was going to continue helping people like she did now. 

Walking to school with Peter and Ned was different from walking to school alone. 

For one, they talked. A lot; she was never alone with her own thoughts like before and she wasn’t sure whether to enjoy or be annoyed by it. For now she went with enjoying it. Ever since they (or Peter really) had asked her to come over that day, she’d found that she definitely laughed more; it was easier to do when the joke was actually funny, not just one of Eliza’s mom jokes. 

Tuning in back to the present, Peter had hopped up on a low pipe and was demonstrating a relatively dangerous stunt to Ned, who watched in eagerness as he readied himself to jump off with a flip but hesitated — the stunt had been seen by all three on Youtube and Swift wasn’t too sure Peter should do it, so she stepped up, pushing him off the pipe. Her powers would give her greater agility and ability to do the feat and she tried to give a reason to cover it up: “You were already wrong. It’s like this.” She then showed them, jumping and kicking off the wall into a flip. “There.”

She was then aware that both Ned and Peter were staring at her in amazement. 

_ Oops. That probably wouldn’t have been so easy for a normal person... which they think I am. Gotta cover that up somehow...  _

Ned then spoke up, breaking the stunned silence. “How... did you... do that? That was so awesome! And so unbelievable!” Peter looked similarly stunned, and Swift still needed a way to excuse it. “I guess I’m just a natural,” she said, faking a smile. “Don’t know how I did it, really. Maybe it was... instinct? Or maybe one of my hidden talents.” She winked. “I’ll say.” Peter was still looking at her, astonished. 

With a slightly embarrassed smile, she started to turn and get to walking but paused and glanced back at her friends. “Cmon, guys, we’re going to be late for school.” 

The two boys shared an amused look, then followed her back on the road, and she felt just a tiny bit guilty for lying to them too.

That night, after making the streets a little safer, she lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling and found herself thinking about Peter. The way he worried, the way he smiled, the way he looked so surprised when she did something unexpected. She knew she liked him as a friend but she wondered if she felt something for him, something more than just friendship. 

_ You can’t think about that right now, silly. Sort it out later, don’t get distracted.  _

But that night she dropped off to sleep with a smile on her face. 


	5. Chapter 4

Desperately trying to stay awake in class, Swift had to stifle a yawn. Her nighttime adventures had taken a toll on how much sleep she got each night, and she was getting drowsy in the middle of History. 

“Swift!” she heard someone hiss from behind her, and she realised it was Peter. Her head jerked up. Had she actually fallen asleep? As she started to turn and look to him and Ned, a small paper airplane slid out of the air onto her desk. She unfolded it; there was a note in Peter’s handwriting. 

_ You were falling asleep. Not yet, but  almost . :) _

_ Ugh. I can’t fall asleep in school. If Peter noticed, who else did? _ She glanced around. No one seemed to have seen it, but better safe than sorry. She turned and mouthed a thank you to her friend. 

Her vigilante exploits were affecting her school life much more than she’d thought at first. 

“Swift.” 

Her eyes blinked open to see Peter looking concernedly at her. The table was cold against her cheek, and she realised she’d fallen asleep in the middle of doing her algebra homework. 

Cursing in her head, she shook it to clear the grogginess and faced her two friends. Peter and Ned were staring at her with exactly the same worry on their faces, and she would have giggled if it hadn’t been directed at her. They were gathered around the little coffee table in Peter’s living room, where they’d all come to do homework together. 

And she’d fallen asleep. 

_ Darn . _

The “Swift, are you okay?” Peter asked tentatively. She nodded, rubbing her eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Ned shared a doubtful look with Peter. “Really? ‘Cause you’ve been falling asleep anywhere and everywhere when we’re not in class.” “We just want to know if there’s anything wrong. And if we can help.” Their earnest expressions made her want to tell them the truth, but she couldn’t.

If she did, they’d be in danger, and then she might lose the family she had just found. 

So she attempted a smile, told them she was just studying hard, and left them with the idea that everything was just fine, as always. 

_ I wish I could tell you _ , she thought as she gazed through Peter’s window that night. _But it’s just too dangerous._ _ If anyone else found out who I was, they might come after you, and Ned and Eliza.  _

_ And I can’t lose you. _

_ Any of you.  _

“I’m just saying, if there’s anything wrong, anything at all, we can help. I’m serious, you can tell us anything. We’re your friends...”

She almost couldn’t take it anymore; Peter was seriously getting annoying with all his “I’ll help you” talk, and it was only the start of the day, walking to school with Peter; Ned was lagging behind, studying something on his phone that seemed to intrigue him greatly.

“For goodness sake, Pete, I’m fine. Just stop jawing on and leave me alone, would you?” she snapped and stomped off into an alley.

Hearing his footsteps behind her, she ran in between pipes and dumpsters like she had before meeting them, when she had been friendless and had no one to worry about her but Eliza. She heard Peter’s voice behind her but ignored it and him, flipping over a parked motorcycle and climbing over a metal fence. 

“Swift, wait!”

She kept running, telling herself Peter didn’t know anything and didn’t deserve to know because if he did, all he would do was leave her. And then she’d lose someone, get hurt. 

Just like when her parents had died.

Things started to blur in front of her, and she stumbled over a box in her way. _ Damn, now I’m crying.  _

She’d started to lag, and Peter was catching up with her — as she passed a battered back door he grabbed her by the arm. The last thing she saw was his worried, caring gaze.

And then he kissed her. 


End file.
